Of course, the fatal flaw in that gun advocate's argument is that the definition of "violent crime" in Britain and Australia is quite different from the definition of violent crime as the FBU statistics define it.

“In the UK there are 2,034 violent crimes per 100,000 people. …The US has a violent crime rate of 466 [violent] crimes per 100,000 residents.”
Some advice for Mr. Swann: when you see statistics that look unbelievable, you probably shouldn’t believe them, at least until you dig deeper into the data. Based on these figures, it appears that Britain is over 4 times more violent than the US, and since this is all he gives you, that is exactly what he leads his viewers to believe.

What Swann either doesn’t know, or simply doesn’t bother to tell his viewers, is that the definitions for “violent crime” are very different in the US and Britain, and the methodologies of the two statistics he cites are also different. (He probably simply doesn’t realize this: it appears that he lifted his data wholesale from a story in the Daily Mail, without checking it–something you might expect a fact checker to have done.)

First, it should be noted that the figures Swann gives are out of date: in 2010, according to the FBI, the reported rate of violent crime in the US was 403 incidents per 100,000 people–the 466 figure comes from 2007. Second, and more importantly, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports defines a “violent crime” as one of four specific offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

The British Home Office, by contrast, has a substantially different definition of violent crime. The British definition includes all “crimes against the person,” including simple assaults, all robberies, and all “sexual offenses,” as opposed to the FBI, which only counts aggravated assaults and “forcible rapes.”

When you look at how this changes the meaning of “violent crime,” it becomes clear how misleading it is to compare rates of violent crime in the US and the UK. You’re simply comparing two different sets of crimes. In 2009/10, for instance (annual data is from September to September), British police recorded 871,712 crimes against persons, 54,509 sexual offenses, and 75,101 robberies in England and Wales. Based on the 2010 population of 55.6 million, this gives a staggeringly high violent crime rate of 1,797 offenses per 100,00 people.

But of the 871,000 crimes against the person, less than half (401,000) involved any actual injury. The remainder were mostly crimes like simple assault without injury, harassment, “possession of an article with a blade or point,” and causing “public fear, alarm, or distress.” And of the 54,000 sexual offenses, only a quarter (15,000) were rapes. This makes it abundantly clear that the naive comparison of crime rates either wildly overstates the amount of violence in the UK or wildly understates it in the US.

Besides the misleading data used, it’s interesting to note the statistics he didn’t give you. For instance, Swann correctly pointed out that it is no surprise the UK has fewer shooting deaths than the US, since handguns are almost totally banned. But he neglects to mention that Britain doesn’t just have fewer gun-related homicides–it has a dramatically lower murder rate all around. In 2010, the US had an average murder rate of 4.8 murders per 100,000 people–4 times higher than the UK’s rate of 1.2 per 100,000"

And what REALLY irks me is that the people spouting these so-called "statistics" are, I'm sure, quite well aware of how thye are misleading people.

I think you are missing the point. The important point is to know what you think BEFORE looking at the data. This way you can choose the statistics that most effectively demonstrate that your opinion is correct.

Remember: decide first; look for statistics only after your mind is made up. Much simpler--no data analysis needed!

I think you're not really seeing much action on this one because, it's difficult to say. Yes, there are a lot of pundits who push their views, Fox news is, of course right of center. MSNBC and a lot of their pundits are to the left and push those views. Both can be aggressive and inconsiderate of the guest. There are news organizations which pride themselves on actually trying to be fair and balanced. I like of a lot of the NPR programming, and while it may be a little on the liberal side I think they try to represent all sides without yelling at the listener. I believe they actually use this in adverts when they are trying to raise money. Something like "Other radio stations yell at their listeners, we don't" Sounds good to me! I was watching CNN the other night, granted I guess it's the Euro or international version, but they had Hillary Clinton on testifying to some members of congress about Benghazi. Of course they are sort of known for their point the camera and let it go reporting style, which I also like. In sum, there is a lot of soapboxing in Am. media, but some do a pretty good job of trying to be fair, I think. Maybe I'm just listening to the stuff that I agree with and thus think it's fair